Employer of last resort

Employers of last resort (ELR) are employers in an economy to whom workers go for jobs when no other jobs are available; the term is by analogy with "lender of last resort". The phrase is used in two senses:

• undesirable jobs, often private sector, which are only taken as a last resort;
• a formal government job guarantee program, where the government promises to act as employer of last resort, employing all comers.

The sense of a job guarantee program is used and advocated by some schools of Post-Keynesian economists, notably by authors of Modern Monetary Theory at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the Levy Economics Institute (both United States) and in the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (Australia), who advocate it as a solution for unemployment.